Luna blinked, uncertain. Then, realizing what he meant, she uttered a little, “Oh!” and held out her arms. The next moment, with muttered words in a strange, foul-sounding language and a configuration of sigils in the air, Mr. Grimm drew the anti-glitter coating off her, condensed it into a whorling ball in his fist, then crushed it. Sorcerous energy motes dispersed into Garden’s atmosphere.
Luna swallowed. Her gaze fixed on the sight of Mr. Grimm’s clenched fist. It was strange how comfortable she’d become with him, even knowing as she now did how powerful he was. How dangerous. She should not have let her guard down, but . . . now that it was down, could she bear to put it up again?
“Shall we go see if the door is open?” he asked softly.
And so their time together was at an end. An unexpected afternoon, quite unlike anything Luna could possibly have imagined when she lay soaking her pillow with tears the night before. A magical, terrifying, brilliant sort of afternoon, one that would live on in her memory for the rest of her life. But one which inevitably led them right back to where they were before.
The return trek through Garden was far more pleasant. Garden made a lazy attempt to shift paths for them, but seemeda bit sluggish, so they still had a hike from the Heart Tree. But the flowers were already beginning to perk up. Though not as abundant or as vibrant following those wild temperature fluctuations, they put forth their best effort under the circumstances. Luna felt quite tired by the time the freestanding boiler room doorway came into view. And she must look an absolute sight, with her hair all a-frizz, and her stockings sagging around her ankles! She couldn’t possibly look more disheveled if she tried. Not that Mr. Grimm was any better. His hair stuck up every which way, and his trousers had dried in a wrinkled mess. One suspender strap flapped around his thigh.
I suppose we’re a properly matched set,Luna thought with a little smile.
Then she stopped dead in her tracks.
Because the door opened.
They were still some yards away, but it simply swung open with a loud creak of hinges, and a figure stood framed in the doorway. A gangly, ginger-headed, snub-nosed figure, with a sorry attempt for facial hair blighting his upper lip. His mouth was ajar, his eyes very round.
“Never mind!”a raucous voice squawked in warning, much too late.
For Tobias Goddard saw everything that lay beyond the boiler room door.
“Gore blimey!” The words burst from his lips like gunshot. Then he turned his staring eyes and spotted Nigel and Luna approaching.“Gore blimey!”he cried again.
It was right about then that Mr. Grimm shot him with a bolt of Dire Matter.
“Mr. Grimm!”
Nigel flinched. He couldn’t help it. He’d heard that tone of voice from her before, and it never failed to make him react like a puppy with his nose caught in the bin. But it wasn’t as though he was doing anything soverywrong this time, was it?
He glanced over at Luna, his hand still upraised, his eyes still flashing with the darkness of Fell Dimensions, the potent sear of energy-exchange sharp in his veins. He’d sourced the energy for that spell up from the soil of Garden itself, but the process had been a little too quick and spontaneous following the larger spell he’d just worked on the Heart Tree. The results were painful.
And now Luna gaped at him with open-mouthed shock and fury. All the blood drained out of her face, and her eyes were large and staring beneath that mess of tangled dark hair.
“You gave me permission to protect Garden,” Nigel pointed out.
“Within reason!”she cried. “I saidwithin reason!I’m quite sure I enunciated those words withperfect clarity.” She shook her head, clapping both hands to her cheeks as her stare shiftedfrom Nigel to the figure lying sprawled in the boiler room doorway. “I didn’t think I needed to mention thatmurder is not reasonable.Even a Dark Sorcerer ought to be able to figure that one out!”
Nigel felt his face set in sulky lines. “I didn’t murder him.” Even in his own ears, his voice sounded petulant. “He’s merely unconscious.”
“Is he?” With a desperate little inhale, Luna hastened to the side of young Tobias. The boy lay flat on his back, his feet sticking through the door into Garden’s grounds, the rest of his body in the back passage of The Arcane Bouquet. Nigel firmly suppressed a pang of jealousy at her concern over the weasely little idiot. He personally didn’t feel the world would be particularly worse off without one Tobias Goddard in it . . . though, granted, that was probably the Dark Sorcerer in him talking.
Luna dropped to her knees beside the boy, placed her fingers against his neck, then dropped her head against his chest. Nigel swallowed. When the spell on the Heart Tree had taken effect and knocked the wind out of him, he’d struggled to draw breath. The sudden sensation of Luna Talbot’s cheek pressed against his chest had acted like a shock, jolting his lungs back into action. He’d not been in a position to fully appreciate it in the moment, however.
It was all a bit spoiled now, seeing her show the same concern for Tobias.
“He’s breathing.” Luna sat back onto her heels, her shoulders slumping. Then she glared at Nigel. “No thanks to you!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nigel answered with great dignity, drawing near to the door. “Whatever else you may think of me, I amnota sloppy sorcerer, Miss Talbot. I intended to knock him out. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
“Never mind,”Debbie concurred, flapping to roost on his shoulder.
“And what wereyouthinking?” Luna demanded, turning her attention from Nigel to the raven. “Did you really give that key to Tobias Goddard, of all people?”
She ruffled her wings, affronted.
“Don’t you go ruffling your wings at me!” Luna took the key from Tobias’s greasy fingers, peering into the boy’s face as she did so. She bit her lips, her jaw setting hard. Then she turned to Nigel again. “He definitely saw Garden. Didn’t he, Mr. Grimm?”
Nigel rubbed a hand down the back of his neck. “His reaction was not that of a man looking into a boiler room.”
